al aisle at the
crossing--are the arches leading north and south to the chapels. They
too spring from corbels and are quite plain.

[Sidenote: Santarem, Marvilla.]

Up in the town on the top of the hill the nave of the church of the
Marvilla--whose Manoelino door and chancel have already been
mentioned--is of about the same date. This nave is about one hundred
feet long by fifty-five wide, has three aisles with wooden ceilings; the
arcades of round arches with simple moulded architrave rest on the
beautiful Ionic capitals of columns over twenty-six feet high. These
capitals, of Corinthian rather than of Ionic proportions, with simple
fluting instead of acanthus leaves, have curious double volutes at each
angle, and small winged heads in the middle of each side of the abacus.

Altogether the arcades are most stately, and the beauty of the church is
further enhanced by the exceptionally fine tiles with which the walls as
well as the spandrels above the arches are lined. Up to about the height
of fifteen feet, above a stone bench, the tiles, blue, yellow, and
orange, are arranged in panels, two different patterns being used
alternatively, with beautiful borders, while in each spandrel towards
the central aisle an Emblem of the Virgin, Tower of Ivory, Star of the
Sea, and so on, is surrounded by blue and yellow intertwining leaves.
Above these, as above the panels on the walls, the whole is covered with
dark and light tiles arranged in checks, and added as stated by a date
over the chancel arch in 1617. The lower tiles are probably of much the
same date or a little earlier.

Against one of the nave columns there stands a very elegant little
pulpit. It rests on the Corinthian capital of a very bulbous baluster,
is square, and has on each side four beautiful little Corinthian
columns, fluted and surrounded with large acanthus leaves at the bottom.
Almost exactly like it, but round and with balusters instead of
columns, is the pulpit in the church of Nossa Senhora dos Olivaes at
Thomar. (Fig. 89.)

[Sidenote: Elvas, Sao Domingos.]

The most original in plan as well as in decoration of all the buildings
of this time is the church of the nunnery of Sao Domingos at Elvas, like
nearly all nunneries in the kingdom now fast falling to pieces. In plan
it is an octagon about forty-two feet across with three apses to the
east and a smaller octagonal dome in the middle standing on eight white
marble columns with Doric capitals. T